October 9, 2006:
Unbeknownst to me until yesterday, there was a Halloween haven operating right under my nose, just a few minutes away from our apartment. A local outdoor store that sells Christmas trees in December and sunflowers in June, as it turns out, has been exploiting the month of October for years without me ever noticing it. Oh, I'd passed it before. I saw those giant, light-up lawn inflatables situated on the side of the store visible to passing cars in Octobers past. I just had no way of knowing how much Halloweenosity was truly going on in there. People always assume Babylon to be a faraway place; you really never look for it when you're in a negotiable walking distance from your house.
I couldn't believe my eyes. The "store" consists of a large, mostly outdoors area that's all but shielded from street-view by a series of fences, greenery and parked cars. The only way to know what was happening in there was to...well, go in there, and this was my first time...going in there. The "Halloween Playland," as its called, consists of a pumpkin patch, a series of inflatable kiddy rides and enough Halloween spirit for me to consider my patronage there as the makings for a successful 2006 Halloween season.
Once I got over the disbelief that a place like this could've been hiding within arm's reach for all these years, I broke out the camera and sloppily took as many pictures as possible. Halloween Playland's attractions are open only to those who purchase tickets (they use a real ticket booth, adjacent to an old school movie theater popcorn machine), but since the rides are more suitable for those in the third grade, we just straddled through, ticketless but still happy to be there.
There aren't many places like this around here. I live in a suburb that thinks it's a city, but it's city enough to not have much room for totally rural pumpkinlands. As such, it's way more popular than a big backyard full of pumpkins and borderline "rides" deserves to be, because there's no competition. The place was packed with kids, and most of the kids were ridiculously giddy because they thought they were only going out to help pick their family's pumpkin.
Halloween Playland isn't a real theme park, isn't a real Halloween event and isn't a real anything. Its attractions and decor were done on the cheap, but done so thoroughly and with so much dime store charm that I couldn't help wanting to run around on my knees and see if the ticket-collectors would let me in the black-and-orange ballpit.
At its core, Halloween Playland is a pumpkin patch. Not a real pumpkin patch, mind you, but a big outdoor space with pumpkins setup in such a way that you forget that it's not a real pumpkin patch. I'd have to drive well into Jersey to find a real pumpkin patch, and while it's certainly worth it to do that, it's nice to have the low-rent simile in such proximity.
The best thing about pumpkin patches -- even fake ones -- is the variety. If you buy your pumpkin from a regular store, it's not going to have much awkward charm. There isn't room for awkwardly charmed pumpkins in stores. Only at the patches will you find ridiculously huge, ridiculously misshapen and/or ridiculously off-color pumpkins, and let's face it, that's what you really want. Everyone wants their own pumpkin version of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. For a pumpkin patch that could've just as easily been another string of condominiums, this place's pumps had a lot of awkward charm.
Check out the homemade Simpsons banner, featuring Kang and Kodos. Much of the ambiance at Halloween Playland was of the homemade variety, making everything look and feel much like the one haunted house ride of a rundown traveling carnival. This is something to be proud of.
Photo opportunities aplenty, including a monster version of Mount Rushmore with an open slot for people with really tiny heads to become one with the creatures. Something I don't get: A lot of kids were sticking their heads in there even when nobody was setting up to take a picture. What's the point? Is there enjoyment to be had just in knowing that your head fits? I can't say that I don't understand it -- I would do it too -- but playing voyeur for a minute just proved my point. Kids would run up to the thing, stick their heads in the hole, and stand up two seconds later with a "what the fuck did I do that for?" face on. And then they'd run away kicking over every pumpkin in their path, because kids are bloody jerks.
This Scooby-Doo inflatable playhouse was one of Halloween Playland's most popular attractions, though I guess that's not a huge accomplishment considering that sticking your head in a Mount Scary Rushmore billboard also counts as an "attraction."
There was nothing scary at all about this Universal Monsters playhouse, but I noticed that it was getting a pitiful amount of use when compared against the other inflatables. Kids would zip up, see Dracula and hightail. As each of the rides had some poor man or woman sitting in front to collect tickets, I kind of felt bad for the guy stationed by the Universal Monsters playhouse. Then again, if I worked at Halloween Playland, I guess I'd want the ride with the fewest children punching me in the crotch on the way in.
By the way, I purposely angled the photo so that the guy sitting in a chair by the entrance wouldn't be in view/have to move, but he did anyway, leading to an exchange of poorly understood hand signals, with me trying to convey that I wasn't taking a picture of him, and him trying to convey that he didn't want to keep having to move over, and the little girl standing between us trying to figure out why we were both doing Bangles dance steps in her direction. It was awesome.
Another inflatable playhouse, this time will less of a solid theme. It was just a yellow, castle-shaped thing with various Halloween icons crudely painted on it, which kids jumped around on until they got tired, threw up or noticed that there was a Scooby-Doo version of what they were playing in just ten feet away.
Every kid wanted to jump inside the completely closed-off giant inflatable pumpkin, but it was a point of contention between them and their parents. Parents aren't prone to let their kids jump around a loosely guarded trampoline with twenty other children unless they can maintain a close watch, and with this thing, mothers and fathers had to fight other mothers and fathers for the few spots near screen-covered portholes on the sides of the pumpkin. I don't think the store owners counted on crowds this big, but when you drive up the street with kids in the car and they spot other kids bouncing on a freakin' 15' pumpkin, there's not much you can do besides park and pray that it ends quick.
Because they sell Halloween decorations of all kinds, Halloween Playland is privy to trimming its trim with Halloween decorations of all kinds. It was great -- even when you stumbled into the boring aisles full of potted plants, there'd still be random hanging bats and stuff. The giant gargoyle, for example, was situated in such a way that only those who came to shop for fertilizer would see him. I don't know why that makes him so much cooler, but it does. He's like...the secret gargoyle. When brother and sister exit Halloween Playland and argue over who had seen more, the contender who met the secret gargoyle always wins.
There was even a special tent for kids who bought pumpkins to paint them at a reasonable additional cost, but nobody seemed too interested. I guess that's what happens when you give kids the option between painting fruit and jumping in a big thing with Scooby-Doo graphics all over it.
The witch is pretty by the book, but I love the Shakespearian skeleton dude. Sadly, both of these put-your-face-in-the-hole-things were placed too close to the fence for anyone to put-their-face-in-the-hole. I can't imagine how many dreams have been crushed this season because of this.
Finally, my favorite area in Halloween Playland. Away from the inflatable nuthouses and pumpkins was a spot decorated with a decidedly eerier flair. Creepy haunted house banners, rusted metal and bloodied dummies seemed almost out of place at an event so family-friendly, but considering that all of this stuff led to an area that was for staff only, I thought it was just there to dissuade any younglings from running past the invisible lines. After around fifteen minutes of standing in still admiration for the spooky area of Halloween Playland, I realized that this was much more than it initially seemed -- beyond that creepy banner was a fully functional haunted walk-through!
A real ride, with audio-animatronics, live actors, sound effects and strobe lights! We didn't go on, because frankly, it seemed wrong for the staff to have to again collect the six people necessary to operate the attraction just so I could take a few blurry pictures of that classic dark ride staple, the "rubber electronic man who perpetually upchucks toxic green liquid into a pail."
Later, I lived vicariously through scared children as they exited the ride through a door inside Halloween Playland's gift shop. Peering through the curtain, I noticed endless amounts of fake spider webs hanging in a small maze full of potted bamboo plants. I think it's pretty clear that I need to borrow my sister's kids and get the hell in there next weekend.
I'm so depressed whenever I go to one of my favorite Jersey shore amusement parks and see the criminal lack of old school dark rides -- the kind with obsolete effects, lame scare tactics and totally overdone paint jobs. I love those things, and this is the closest I've been to one in years. Thank you, Halloween Playland. Thank you for converting a shed into ten minutes of terror.
Just outside the haunted walk-through was a portapotty modified to tie in with the theme; in this case, the toilet is stuffed with plastic mud and debris. Every kid seemed to get a kick out of this, but one boy in particular took it as the opus of modern comedy, doubling over with laughter for a solid two minutes before calling for his dad to "come look at all the poop." We took this as our sign to leave Halloween Playland.
So much Halloweeny Americana stuffed into one small field, I can't tell you how good it felt to walk among the ghouls and know that I was really doing something that could only happen during the Halloween season. As much as I'd love to sit at home watching horror specials on AMC, eating mini-pretzels in the shape of bats and call it a season, I know that it takes more effort than that. Sometimes, you've just gotta drive to the lawn store up the street and see if they've got a portapotty full of demon shit inside.
Course, a place like this wouldn't try to grab so many people for the sale of ride tickets and pumpkins alone. No, Halloween Playland also had a gift shop. Where garden hoses and lawnmower equipment rests during other calendar months becomes a Halloween supershop in October, stuffed with all kinds of crazy doodads that aren't typically found in department or toy stores. I'd tell you more about it, but there's enough to score a second Countdown entry out of my finds. See you in the gift shop, tomorrow!
